


Getting off on Bad Behavior

by Ellerigby13



Series: Smile Like You Mean It - The Jay "Bucky" Barnes Story [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, Ghostwriter Darcy, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lightly based on Bojack Horseman S01, One Night Stands, Singer bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 20:38:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20841659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellerigby13/pseuds/Ellerigby13
Summary: Washed-up singer Jay Barnes is a pessimist, an alcoholic, and, in pretty much every aspect, a failure in need of a constant babysitter.  Bucky, on the other hand, has had it with the interventions, the rehab, and his best friend and his manager insisting they clean up every mess he makes.  When Maria hires a memoirist to clean up the latest one, things only get messier.





	Getting off on Bad Behavior

**Author's Note:**

> Title and song lyrics from "Karma" by MARINA.

_ And when your world comes crashing down _

_ All of the money in this town _

_ Won't save your reputation now _

_ Real hearts don't lie _

_ Take it from me _

_ You'll see in time _

_ Take it from me _

Bucky watches the memoirist Maria’s hired take her first step into the office, then watches the color drain from her face, her feet rooted to the spot, when she spots him sitting in the rolling chair opposite the door.

_ Fuck _ .

“Jay, this is Darcy Lewis. She’s a writer from Ohio, very talented, and she’s kindly agreed to help us put together your memoir.” Hill’s voice echoes in his ears as if from a distance, and he takes a second too long to meet her gaze, and pushes himself into an upright position with his hands on the armrests. He nods at the girl once, and fixes his eyes on his shoes.

“Hi,” he says, but his voice feels like it’s coming out of someone else’s mouth.

“Hi,” she parrots; he lets himself glance up for a half a moment at the cloudy expression on her face. A white sliver of teeth clench down on her lower lip, and she’s not looking at him either.

Steve clears his throat from beside him, and Bucky almost flinches. He makes a point of raking his hand back through his hair while his best friend gets to his feet, like the goddamn gentleman he’s always been, and offers his seat to her.

“We really appreciate you being here, Miss Lewis,” Steve says, and Bucky feels her sit down before he sees her do it. He focuses on a loose string on the knee of his jeans, twisting it just enough so it gives an inch, but doesn’t come away completely.

“Call me Darcy.” Her voice goes smaller the closer she gets to him, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d say he was blushing to high heaven about now.

Maria resumes her seat at her desk, across from them, and nods Steve to one of the cushioned folding chairs she keeps stacked behind the tasteful house plant in the corner. “We do appreciate you joining us, Darcy. It’s been...quite a journey...that we’re anxious to get documented.”

_ We _ , Bucky echoes in his head, with just a hint of resentment.  _ We _ are not anxious to do jack shit.  _ We _ are just constantly worried about the same thing as always - Jay Barnes’ perpetually tarnished image.

He schools his face enough not to show the venom he wishes he could spit at his manager. There’s something beautiful and terrible about the story he’s shared with her, something serendipitous. He’s not sure whether to be spiteful or thankful for the fact that, with every gold record and every stint in rehab, Maria has always been at his elbow, steering him one way or the other.

“You’re a  _ singer _ .”

He digs the toe of his well-worn sneaker into the carpet. “Yeah.”

“And...you want me to ghostwrite your memoir.”

Maria’s about to open her mouth, but Bucky lets out a soft laugh, one that doesn’t quite reach his lips. “You can use the word ‘want’ loosely.”

“We’re in the middle of a re-brand,” Hill cuts in helpfully, her steadfast smile cheery in the cheeks but threatening in the eyes when she turns them on him. “Jay has had...something of a personal discovery over the last few months.”

Translate: yet another stint in rehab. He’s had to promise himself and Maria and Steve that this is the last time, as though he hadn’t promised the same every time before. Steve was the one who found him just a few months before, groggy in the bathtub with all his clothes on, a half-finished bottle of Jack resting in the crook of his arm and a mess of cans littering the bathroom floor. At least, that’s what Steve told him.

He watches his best friend now, the tall blond folding his arms over his barrel of a chest. He remembers a time when he had to protect Steve, when the man next to him was a skinny kid with asthma picking fights with all the bigger kids. Bucky scratches at the place where the string has come loose, and pushes his nail into the inevitable hole.

“You’ll want to get used to the AA meetings,” he tells Darcy, gaze fixed in his lap. “Cigarette breaks, black coffee, a lot of Jesus talk. Or, a lot of ‘higher power’ talk, at least.” He shrugs, and a sardonic smirk makes its way up his lips. “If it ain’t Jesus, it’s crystals, numerology, sage. Very Los Angeles.”

Some kind of exhale leaves Darcy’s nose, half of a laugh. His stomach tightens pleasantly when he notices her smiling at a spot on the floor a few feet in front of her.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” An audibly silent pause falls over the room. Hill’s weird smile is still pasted across her face, and she looks from Steve to Bucky to Darcy and back again, as though the three of them are conspiring against her, like three naughty children spiting their mother. “So…” Darcy attempts, and tucks a stray hair into the plush beanie at her crown. “When do you want me to start? What are you...what exactly do you want me to do?”

Maria quirks an eyebrow. “Like our angle?” Darcy shrugs in return. “Well, it may not be quite common knowledge yet, but Jay is in the midst of...what you might call a redemption story.” Good  _ God _ . His eyeballs would roll right out of his head if he weren’t so hungover. “We need this to acknowledge his faults, but overall, show that Jay is ready to be on the up. To go forward and be the artist and the man he’s...meant to be.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Maria,” he says, the words slipping out of his lips before he can put together what exactly he’s doing. It’s when she looks at him that he figures out he’s gotten his feet under him, and that he’s making his way for the door.

No one follows him out of her office, or into the lobby, or out into the parking lot where he finds his usual corner to have a smoke.

Bucky doesn’t really know why that last bit should have tipped him over the edge. Maybe it’s the stuffy room with the last few people who give a shit about him, plus one girl who he shouldn’t know as well as he does. Maybe it’s the bottle of Crown he shared with a string of shitty Netflix movies last night. Maybe it’s the fact that he doesn’t  _ feel  _ like an artist or a man at this point, let alone any spiritual bullshit Maria’s trying to push on him.

He fiddles in his pocket for a cigarette, and proceeds to jump at the voice beside him.

“So you’re a  _ singer _ -singer.” Darcy holds a lighter out for him after she sets a flame to her own smoke. He takes the light and inhales deeply, closing his eyes.

“Yup.”

“And we fucked before or after your relapse?”

He laughs then, almost choking on the way the sound rises, free and wild, from low in his stomach. “Which one?”

Darcy lifts both eyebrows, and folds her arms over her chest to keep warm in an unseasonably chilly San Diego afternoon. She surveys him once, an up-down he’s received many times, and purses her lips around her cigarette. “You’re gonna be a fucking roller coaster, aren’t you?”

“That mean you still wanna ghostwrite my memoir?” Bucky exhales smoke in long, thin curls, and watches it rise to join the soft gray of the sky. Darcy thinks about it for a long moment, but at the same time, looks kind of like she’s not thinking about it at all. Continues to survey him, with the soft hazel eyes that brought him in one night a week or two before, under the dim lights of a dive bar he shouldn’t have been at. He was playing the night, pretending to be someone between the Jay Barnes Maria wanted him to be and the Bucky that he couldn’t escape. She offered to buy him a drink after his set, and he asked for a ginger ale.

They spent the rest of the night at the narrow apartment she was renting, half the time whispering under the sheets and half the time tangled up in them. Bucky didn’t realize how late it was until the sun peeked through the cheap blinds and cast shadowy lines across their naked legs.

She was the most interesting person he’d met in this town, and she had no idea who he was.

“Do I still get to call you Bucky, or is it Jay?” She elongates the last syllable with a dramatic low growl, her pinky tipping away from her cigarette.

He fights the urge to laugh again, watching her this time. Soft hazel eyes, lips like cool slices of peach, turned up in a timid smirk.

“Please,  _ please _ don’t call me Jay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Hope you enjoyed <3


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